The plane took off.
It was soaring tens of thousands of feet up in the air.
Ning Lan closed her eyes and slept.
Xu Meilan was reading a book.
Chen Guang and Zhao Wuliu were discussing tonight’s music festival.
“Old Zhao, which song did you prepare?”
“‘Bobo.'”
“Oh, that one.”
“There’s some difficulty to it, so it will have to depend on my condition. What about you?”
“I don’t really know too many heavy metal songs either. I’ll probably go ahead with ‘Chariot.'”
“Neither of us are true metal singers, so we’d be forcing ourselves to sing in that style.”
“But we have no heavy metal to call our own in China.”
“Yeah. Hai, in the end, we still have to do covers of other singers’ songs.”
“There are some heavy metal songs that came out in our country in recent years, but they’re still not mature enough to be called good. We’re still starting, so let’s take it slowly. I’m sure there will be a day when we can finally have good songs of our own.”
“Hopefully so.”
Zhang Ye was wearing an eye mask to nap and had overheard their conversation.
Surely not, right?
China does not have any heavy metal music to call its own?
Then what is the heavy metal scene like internationally?
He got curious about this. After all, he wasn’t from this world and had slowly gotten to understand many matters in China. But there were still a lot of things he did not know about in the international scene. Since he was now thinking about aiming for the overseas market, he would naturally have to start getting a picture of how things worked abroad, especially for things like the style of music, as well as the culture. This was the other objective that Zhang Ye had for this trip to Korea. He was going to scout for intel.
An hour.
Two hours.
The plane landed. They had arrived in Korea.
Seoul.
The airport.
When they came out to Arrivals, they were met by someone from the charity banquet’s organizers. Perhaps there was also a leak in the news, so a lot of Korean fans and Chinese international students could also be seen standing in wait.
“Ah!”
“Xu Meilan!”
“Xu Meilan!”
“Jiang Hanwei!”
“It’s Xiaodong!”
A lot of people were shouting in Korean.
Many of them were even holding up signs and cheering for their idols.
Zhang Ye could not understand nor read the Korean letters, but he could still sense that no one was shouting his name. This showed that there was a significant drop in his popularity once he got out of China. In China, Zhang Ye was of equal status to Heavenly Queen Xu Meilan. He would have all kinds of fans surrounding him where he went, like at the airport lounge where two passengers approached Zhang Ye and Xu Meilan for their autographs and pictures. However, once they arrived in Korea, Xu Meilan was still enjoying the same kind of attention while Zhang Ye was not as well-known anymore, with his popularity dropping by a notch. Without mentioning Xu Meilan, even Jiang Hanwei, Xiaodong, Amy, and the others were more popular than Zhang Ye. It was to the point that a lot of the people did not seem to know who Zhang Ye was as they did not even cast a glance at him.
On the bus.
Zhang Ye looked out of the window and took in the exotic scenery, feeling very relaxed.
Ning Lan asked, “You seem to be in a good mood, don’t you?”
Zhang Ye smiled and said, “Yeah, it’s rare that I can go somewhere without getting recognized.”
Xiaodong rolled her eyes and said, “But you’re an Asian A-lister.”
Zhang Ye said in amusement, “I’m at the bottom of the A-list, and it’s also only because of the stats that I’m in it.”
“There are also lots of people who know you here.” Chen Guang said, “But it’s just that not many of them are fans of yours. This is because you haven’t had any art that’s made it overseas, nor did you participate in any of the regional Asian activities.”
Amy said, “But coming back to the point, the people who have the greatest influence and popularity in the Asian region are mainly the Korean celebrities. Of the Asian Heavenly Kings and Queens, over half of them are Korean stars. The Korean entertainment industry is world famous. From their selection criteria, to the training and promotions, all of it is quite professionally handled. I feel that we’re lacking compared to them in this area.”
Jiang Hanwei spoke at this moment, “The Korean celebrities are indeed very popular. They might not have many successful examples on the international stage, nor do they have that many international superstars, but they have it really good in Asia. Just using China as an example, as long as a Korean star has a good act and is slightly better looking, they’ll be quite popular in China. At the very least, they can develop pretty well in our market. But for our own celebrities, if they’re thinking of expanding into the Korean or Japanese markets and doing well, that becomes a really difficult thing to achieve.”
The bus traveled down the road.
Everyone chatted along the way.
Reaching the hotel.
Unpacking their luggage.
Eating.
By the time everything was done, it was already afternoon.
They had free time now since the charity banquet would be held tomorrow. Since everyone had nothing to do, they decided to accompany Chen Guang and Zhao Wuliu.
“Shall we leave?”
“Alright, let’s head to the heavy metal music festival to see what it’s about.”
“I hardly ever listen to metal.”
“Old Chen and Old Zhao will both be singing?”
“Yeah, don’t mind us if we embarrass ourselves.”
“Haha, we’ll be cheering both of you on from the audience.”
After arranging for the transportation and an interpreter, they set off for the venue.
…
Later that afternoon.
A little after 5 PM.
At a venue in Seoul, the music was pumping hard.
They had gone in via the back entrance and were ushered to the VIP seats.
Once they got in, Ning Lan covered her ears. “It hasn’t started yet, right? Why is it so noisy then?”
Amy laughed. “This is exactly the kind of atmosphere they’re aiming for. Heavy metal music is very enjoyable to listen to. You need to feel it with your heart. It’s a pity that we don’t have many songs in our country. Most of the performances we have are just imitating what they do overseas and are only covers of foreign songs.”
Big Qi asked, “What about Korea and Japan?”
Amy was a professional musician, so she naturally knew about the scene. She explained, “Korea and Japan also have their own styles of heavy metal. For example in Japan, their style is closer to that of the earlier heavy metal scene. Meanwhile, for Korea, I personally do not feel that they have a very clear style. What they do is forcefully switch English heavy metal songs into Korean. But if you want to say that that’s Korea’s very own genre of heavy metal, then I guess it wouldn’t be wrong either.”
Xiaodong said, “It’s only China that doesn’t have their own identity of metal to speak of.”
Amy said, “There’s nothing we can do about that. This is a path that we have to slowly find our way in. We have to see how we can use the Chinese language to bring about our very own style of metal. It may sound very simple, but it’s in fact far too difficult to achieve.”
There wasn’t a style of metal that belonged to China?
They were talking about this again?
This was already Zhang Ye’s second time hearing this today.
He was getting more and more curious about what this world’s heavy metal scene was really like.
The audience filed into the venue. There were Chinese international students, Koreans, and many Westerners attending the event. The scene was bouncing and everyone was dressed in very unique ways. Some of them were more alternative, while some were fully dressed in leather jackets and leather pants. Some people had dyed their hair all kinds of different colors. A majority of the crowd were young adults, and they were all pretty unique in their own ways.
20 minutes later.
Everyone had been admitted.
The International Heavy Metal Music Festival officially began.
A Korean band came out onstage.
The moment they appeared, loud screams rang out from the audience!
It was in Korean. They were all shouting the same thing.
Obviously, Zhang Ye and the others did not understand what was being said.
The interpreter who had come along smiled and explained, “They’re calling out the band’s name: Storm.”
Zhang Ye remarked, “Thunder didn’t come with them?”
Amy rolled her eyes and said, “This is one of the most popular heavy metal bands in Korea.”
Xiaodong shouted, “They’re starting!”
Xu Meilan looked to the stage curiously. She wasn’t really someone who listened to heavy metal music either.
All of a sudden, the stage lights flashed and dazzled!
Violent music rocked the arena!
Guitar!
Bass!
It set the arena off!
All the shouting was in Korean. They couldn’t understand what was being sung and could only feel the music.
Amy was an expert in this area. She said loudly, “This is really quite good!”
Xiaodong also knew a little about this. “This metal voice, their lead singer has got a really good voice!”
Xu Meilan quietly listened in appreciation.
Ning Lan was sitting with her legs crossed and covering her ears. She found the noise unbearable.
Only Zhang Ye had a different expression from the others. He was stunned.
The second band came out!
It was a heavy metal band from Japan!
They were followed by a third band, which was one of the American representatives!
The fourth band was from Finland!
The fifth one was from England!
In the audience, many of the Chinese international students were hooked by the performances. They were waving their hands wildly to the music!
“This is awesome!”
“What a great song!”
“I like Storm so much!”
“It’s still more amazing to hear it live!”
“Yeah, it was really worth the effort to come here today!”
“Have Chen Guang and Zhao Wuliu made their appearance yet?”
“Soon, soon!”
“It’s a pity that we don’t have any heavy metal music to call our own!”
Xu Meilan gave her evaluation.
Jiang Hanwei and Big Qi were also discussing the performances.
Only Zhang Ye alone was stunned as he listened to the bands perform one after another!
That was it?
Was that it?
Damn, and I was wondering how special the heavy metal scene would be after listening to everyone talking today. I thought that this world’s heavy metal music would be very different from my previous world. Well, isn’t it the same, after all? Isn’t this just ordinary heavy metal?
They didn’t have something like this in China?
Are you kidding me?